Three astronauts aboard a Soyuz spacecraft launched towards the International Space Station on Thursday after a two-month delay caused by a Russian rocket failure.

The spacecraft blasted off on schedule from Russia's Baikonur cosmodrome in the barren Kazakh steppe at 2102 GMT, carrying cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren and Kimiya Yui of Japan. "Everything is okay, everything is according to plan," said cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin, providing live commentary of the liftoff.